my site will feature (in the long run) hundreds of downloadable files. is it possible to prevent visitors from downloading a large number of files? with the use of download managers, one could download every file on the site with a single click and i would like to put a cap on the number of files one can download in one 24 hour period.
e.g. no more than 20 files per day or no more than 20 megs per day.can this be done?
"large" downloading visitors might make it impossible for more restrained visitors to access my site as well. is that technically correct?

You can protect these folder via your cpanel "Password protect directories"'.

For some files you can also use HotLink Prevention. You can find this feature in your cpanel.



Index Manager

i don't want to hide files in password-protected folers and the hotlink prevention is definitely a good idea but it doesn't answer my basic question: can i (and how?) limit IP numbers (visitors) to download a certain mamimum number of files?
i've seen it being done on illegal warez sites that only allow 5 downloads per day per IP number.

You could make a script (PHP. perl, ASP, whatever) that streams the file through it, and have that file keep count (useing a database?) of how many files have been downloaded by the IP.